Related papers: Counterexample to Babai's lonely colour conjecture
In 1978 Babai raised the question whether all minimal Cayley graphs have bounded chromatic number; in 1994 he conjectured a negative answer. In this paper we show that any minimal Cayley graph of a (finitely generated) generalized dihedral…
A colored graph is a complete graph in which a color has been assigned to each edge, and a colorful cycle is a cycle in which each edge has a different color. We first show that a colored graph lacks colorful cycles iff it is Gallai, i.e.,…
Answering a question of Kalai and Meshulam, we prove that graphs without induced cycles of length $3k$ have bounded chromatic number. This implies the very first case of a much broader question asserting that every graph with large…
A colouring of a graph is "nonrepetitive" if for every path of even order, the sequence of colours on the first half of the path is different from the sequence of colours on the second half. We show that planar graphs have nonrepetitive…
In 2006, Collins and Trenk obtained a general sharp upper bound for the distinguishing chromatic number of a connected graph. Inspired by Catlin's combinatorial techniques from 1978, we establish improved upper bounds for classes of…
An acyclic edge coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring such that no bichromatic cycles are produced. The acyclic edge coloring conjecture by Fiam{\v{c}}ik (1978) and Alon, Sudakov and Zaks (2001) states that every simple graph…
Various results ensure the existence of large complete bipartite graphs in properly colored graphs when some condition related to a topological lower bound on the chromatic number is satisfied. We generalize three theorems of this kind,…
Let $G$ be an abelian group. The main theorem of this paper asserts that there exists a Cayley graph on $G$ with chromatic number $3$ if and only if $G$ is not of exponent $1$, $2$, or $4$. For connected Cayley graphs, we also show that…
In this paper, we prove that the class of graphs with no triangle and no induced cycle of even length at least 6 has bounded chromatic number. It is well-known that even-hole-free graphs are $\chi$-bounded but we allow here the existence of…
Gallai's colouring theorem states that if the edges of a complete graph are 3-coloured, with each colour class forming a connected (spanning) subgraph, then there is a triangle that has all 3 colours. What happens for more colours: if we…
Two colourings of a graph are orthogonal if they have the property that when two vertices are coloured with the same colour in one colouring, then those vertices receive distinct colours in the other colouring. In this paper, orthogonal…
The {\em acyclic chromatic number} of a graph is the least number of colors needed to properly color its vertices so that none of its cycles has only two colors. The {\em acyclic chromatic index} is the analogous graph parameter for edge…
The total Betti number of the independence complex of a graph is an intriguing graph invariant. Kalai and Meshulam have raised the question on its relation to cycles and the chromatic number of a graph, and a recent conjecture on that theme…
A graph class is $\chi$-bounded if the only way to force large chromatic number in graphs from the class is by forming a large clique. In the 1970s, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that intersection graphs of straight-line segments in the plane are…
A cubelike graph is a Cayley graph on the product $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\cdots\times\mathbb{Z}_2$ of the integers modulo $2$ with itself finitely many times. In 1992, Payan proved that no cubelike graph can have chromatic number $3$. The…
It is well-known that an undirected graph has no odd cycle if and only if it is bipartite. A less obvious, but similar result holds for directed graphs: a strongly connected digraph has no odd cycle if and only if it is bipartite. Can this…
Motivated by a recent conjecture of the first author, we prove that every properly coloured triangle-free graph of chromatic number $\chi$ contains a rainbow independent set of size $\lceil\frac12\chi\rceil$. This is sharp up to a factor…
Gyarfas conjectured in 1985 that for all $k$, $l$, every graph with no clique of size more than $k$ and no odd hole of length more than $l$ has chromatic number bounded by a function of $k$ and $l$. We prove three weaker statements: (1)…
Imagine that you are handed a rule for determining whether a cycle in a digraph is "good" or "bad", based on which edges of the cycle are traversed in the forward direction and which edges are traversed in the backward direction. Can you…
Scott proved in 1997 that for any tree $T$, every graph with bounded clique number which does not contain any subdivision of $T$ as an induced subgraph has bounded chromatic number. Scott also conjectured that the same should hold if $T$ is…